USA: Young people struggle for environmental justice

Publié: 6 Juillet 2010
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15-year-old Loreen Dangerfield member of a Group struggling against pollution in San Francisco.
 Detroit, USA, June 24th (IPS). The commitment of young people and adolescents in the movement in favour of environmental justice is one of the new elements emerging from the 2010 USA Social Forum, which gathered around 20.000 activists at this city.



On Wednesday, a group of young activists from the Western city of San Francisco described their struggle against multinational corporations which create pollution in areas inhabited by racial minorities.



“Pollution has no limits: Black, Chinese and Latino youth Organising for Environmental Justice in San Francisco” was the subject of the workshop aimed at environmental issues in the Eastern Coast of the United States.



“The Bayview district were minorities live, is victim of pollution, and many people living there do not even know about it”, stated 18-year-old Ingried Seyundo, form the People to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER).



“Big corporations with power plants contaminate districts were minorities live, and the children are getting sick, mainly with cancer”, but they also suffer from “heart attacks and high blood pressure”, explained Seyundo



This situation appears to be similar to what happened in what was called the “cancer alley”, to the South of the United States, an area between the Mississippi River and the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans where 140 companies produce a fourth part of the petrochemical products manufactured in the country. In 1993, a Federal Commission concluded that the industry had a disproportionate impact on the residents of the area.



Now five San Francisco districts – Bayview Hunter’s Point, Portola, Excelsior, Visitation Valley and Mission – are the scene where another environmental battle is taking place, all of which are mainly populated by Afro-American and working-class people.



“It is important for us to receive education on these environmental issues. We must raise our voices if we are living unbearable situations” said 18-year-old Tiffany Ng from the Common Roots Programme of the Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco (CPAS).



Ng said that her group promotes inter-cultural solidarity and works for a major understanding of political and social issues among young people, developing leadership skills.



On his part, Seyundo indicated that after a long struggle, the Bayview district succeeded in opening new routes for companies’ trucks, so that they would not affect life in residential areas, and that vehicles producing a lower environmental impact should be used.



“We created routes that now allow those vehicles to drive away from places where there are lots of children like schools and also where old people live”, he explained.



15- year- old Loreen Dangerfiel, member of the People Organised to Win Environmental Rights (POWER) pointed out that one of the major problems that concerns them now, is the building of condominiums at a toxic site by a housing development company, called Lennar Corporation. According to activists, the place where the condominium will be built is near Hunters Point shipyard, the place from where atomic bombs launched on Hiroshima and Nagasaki where shipped in 1945.



“The shipyard is toxic itself, and it is a rubbish dump”, said Dangerfield. “In Miami, Lennar built houses on undetonated bombs and people started getting sick”.



Lennar wants to build 8500 houses, including some high buildings, but the activists demand an independent previous report on environmental impact to be issued.



“We do not want Lennar to build the condominium. They bought the shipyard for one dollar” said Dangerfield.



Lennar has been digging in asbestos rocks, sending up carcinogenic dust into the air near residential areas and nearby schools.



Teresa Almaguer, Programme Coordinator of PODER, said that it was highly important to share concerns on environmental justice in poor areas of San Francisco, with other USA Social Forum’s activists.



“What is happening in San Francisco takes place all over the world. Environmental racism has been institutionalized”, Almaguer said.



The activist pointed out that working-class families are being displaced due to the expansion of condominiums for people with a higher economic power, and she warned that these undertakings have a deep environmental impact.



“While we fight to create safe and healthy areas, we are displaced. This is a global issue”, said Almaguer. “We also want to bring attention on Lennar. We need to fight together because we may achieve big things”.



Sandar Sebastian, who came to New York to participate at the Forum developing throughout this week in Detroit, told IPS that she is impressed by the energy and the knowledge shown by the young people of San Francisco.



“I believe that it is really inspiring to find young people so involved in this kind of analysis of environmental justice, and that are able to relate environmental racism with the impact of their daily lives”, she said.



Bankole Thompson



Source: IPS http://www.ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=95750